HOME DEFENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 223, 19 September 1940, Page 8

HOME DEFENCE.

CITY "RAIDED."

TROOPS CALLED OUT.

MILITARY EXERCISES.

What will Berlin say to-morrow!

New Zealand has come into the- war news with a bang. Troops have rebelled in Wellington, and the Maori population has risen againet enlistment, according to the Haw-Haw broadcasts from Berlin. To-morrow may supply credulous Berliner* with the final touch of realism to their picture of a crumbling British Empire in the Pacific with a flaeh message of the "Battle of Auckland," describing the imminent fall of New Zealand's loading city to a raiding enemy force landed under cuv. r of fog and darkness—haw-haw; another laugh. Here ie the news:— Auckland is in the throes of a desperate defence of the city against a force of phantom enemy raiders. The people go about their business aa in peace time, but in the outer terrain, a few miles distant, is war. It is a trial of the first line of New Zealand's home guard, the Territorials, in a tactical manoeuvre which might yet become iicce-tsiuv in this, or some other part of the co»try. Further, it marks a stage in the home defence scheme which reveals months of silent planning arrived at a point of purposeful public preparation to allot everyone a.place in whatever may befall. Their First Battla, Inured to camp life and the fundamentals of discipline and mass movement, the territorial* of the First Auckland Regiment are here having their first leeson in the transport, concentration, commissariat and active field service conditions in an action designed to meet and repel a definitely-envisaged enemy attack on a special point. An attempt at eecret landing of an enemy force is spotted from the watching stations, and a fixed section of the main railway communications is threatened. Mounted rifles delay the invaders, motor cycle platoons keep constant reconnaissance, a body of men is rueed to a point where the invaders muet be engaged in force, held, and driven back to the eea.

A sham battle maybe, but no mere military show is this- The practical problems of transport, communications and field work, of orderly and intelligent movee to keep pace with a changing battle-front under as near an approach to actual war conditions as cau be reached with a mythical foe— Miese are. the testing points for tho regiment.

With eft* command alert to possible defects or variation of the plan, and the men enter jus seriously imo the apii it of the instruction, the main engagement for the defence for the vital section of railway opened thie morning. Throughout the day and night, and tfll well on towards the evening to-morrow, Auckland's main body of home defence will be incessantly engaged in manoeuvres incidental to a real battle. For most of them it is their first battle. Art Of Camouflage. There was an air of stealth about the selected terrain of the point of concern tration to-day, and the art of military camouflage was in full swing." Wandering over » hill, creet, a visitor came on a rocky hollow swarming with troops with rifles and full field kit—but reclining, practically motionless, and hard to pick out against the natural background. Looking round, it appeared to him to be the normal peaceful countryside pf the district. The only moving object on the skyline was a farmer driving his plough team, and when he began to search the hollows near at hand he found that the. place wae crammed with armed m*n and bristling with guns. A still closer scrutiny revealed that a thin clump of waving tea-tree on a knoll near at hand concealed an ariti-aircraft gun, while further along the field a bunch of blackberry had similar deadly fruit awaiting the possible approach of an enemy 'plane. Similarly screened from air observation were camp kitchen, motor trucks and cycles, while headquarters, where Colonel Worley, 0.C., directed operations, appeared to the uninitiated eje to be merely a bunch of inkweed.

No Codimng. ' Meantime .movement was developing in the area. Dispatch riders started to come and go, field telephones to operate, a knot of officers appeared from the inkweed, a bugle sounded, and a company of armed troops with rifles and Lewis guns sprang magically from the earth. They fell in, and marched off to a distant point, whore their mission was to get touch with an enemy force that had outflanked the mounted rifles. There they would take cover, dig in and engage the enemy. Like all the others, they were in full field kit, and would tpend the night under the stars without tents" and no blankets' but their great-coat spruad on Mother Earth on a ground eheet. No coddling for them; this wae war. Barring accidents, however, the commissariat would see that supplies for the inner man would be sent up the line to them.